


Ode to a Skyhopper

by RomanMoray



Series: Between Two Wars [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Cody is long-suffering, Gen, I wrote this so quickly I don't know if it's good, Jedi Training, Luke Skywalker is a dumbass pilot like his father before him, M/M, Sabacc, mild child peril, this work is part of a series!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26687281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RomanMoray/pseuds/RomanMoray
Summary: Luke Skywalker is pretty talented for a child of his age, but he still has a lot to learn about cheating at cards and pulling off reckless stunts in ill-equipped airspeeders. Good thing his strange hermit uncles are always there to help.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker
Series: Between Two Wars [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1864813
Comments: 24
Kudos: 282





	Ode to a Skyhopper

**Author's Note:**

> Hiiiiiiiii
> 
> This has been bouncing around in my head for a bit. It's based on a story from the comics that I have not read, I just straight up stole the concept and reused it for my own purposes because I'm a monster. Anyway, I never thought I'd enjoy writing about Luke this much? And old married codywan?? I'm having a good time, and I hope y'all are too.

Cody arrived home one evening to find Ben and Luke sitting across from each other at the dining room table. Neither looked up or greeted him as the door opened and then slid shut. They were studying each other intensely—Ben's face was a mask of impassivity, while Luke just looked...tense. Neither seemed to be blinking.

Cody didn't think staring contests were a part of Jedi training, but what did he know?

Trying not to disturb whatever it was that was happening, Cody crept into the kitchenette to store the groceries in the pantry. When he returned to the living room, Ben and Luke had not moved an inch. Cody realized with a start that they both had sabacc cards in their hands and there was a pile of "credits" (rocks) in the center of the table. Cody squinted. His partner was...teaching a ten-year-old how to gamble?

Luke caved first.

"Rhylet," he said, laying his cards down on the table in front of him, three negative twos and two positive threes. Ben grinned slyly and followed suit.

"Full sabacc," Ben announced.

" _What?_ " Luke yelped, bright blue eyes wide. "But I stacked the zeroes...I put them on the bottom, I'm sure of it!"

"The slight of hand isn't always enough, young Luke. Your opponent is just as capable of playing you as you are of playing them. You must balance your attention between your own trick and watching your opponent." With a flick of his wrist, he produced yet another black sylop card from his sleeve. Luke slumped in his seat.

So, his partner wasn't teaching his student how to gamble. He was teaching him how to _cheat._

"Uh." The pair looked up at him, finally.

"Cody! How was Mos Espa?"

"Eh, same as it always is." He tossed a small parcel to Luke, who beamed and tore it open eagerly, revealing a healthy (or rather, distinctly unhealthy) stack of sweet-sand cookies.

"Thanks, Cody! Wait, wait—" Luke looked thoughtful. " _Vor entye?_ "

"That's right. Or you could just say ' _vor'e_ ,' which is just 'thanks.' You don't really owe me a debt." Luke nodded seriously and Cody smiled, pleased as ever that Luke had shown an interest in learning Mando'a.

"Uncle Ben tax," Ben announced, and Force-floated the top cookie into his hand. Luke tried to grab it out of the air, but Ben was too quick for that.

_"Hey!"_

"Want half?" Ben waved the abducted cookie at Cody, who moved to him to place a kiss on the top of Ben's head and take a bite out of the cookie.

"I missed you, _cyare_ ," Cody said. Even after all this time, he still got a thrill out of saying all the things that he'd thought in his head for years and never been allowed to say out loud. Well. He'd probably have been _allowed_ , it just would have been weird.

"I missed you too. _Murcyur ni._ " Cody obliged, pressing his lips softly to Ben's.

"You guys are so gross," Luke commented, his nose wrinkling in disgust as he organized the sabacc cards into a neat stack and slid them into their box.

"One day—hopefully when you're much, much older—you'll understand. Or you won't. And that's also fine," Ben replied sagely, reaching up to ruffle Cody's curls with his cookie-free hand.

When Luke had gone home the next day, Cody asked about the card game.

"So. Gambling?" Ben looked up from his book, appearing deceptively guileless.

"An old Jedi training tradition."

"Wh... _cheating at sabacc_ is traditional?"

"Well, I don't know how widespread the practice was. It was one of the first things my Master taught me, though—partially out of necessity. We spent so much time cut off from the assistance of the Republic, we often had to fend for ourselves—I spent a good portion of my time at Luke's age stealing and gambling on my Master's behalf. Qui-Gon also had a tendency to, ah, go rogue, as it were. And I either had to keep up or get left behind. And it _is_ a good training technique, for focus and Force-dexterity."

"No offense, but that's kriffed up." Ben only laughed.

\-----

One of the increasingly few things that Luke enjoyed more than learning about the Force from Ben was flying.

The two activities were not wholly disconnected, Luke had come to realize. The further he progressed in his training, the faster his reflexes became. Within a year, he'd progressed from weaving awkwardly through the canyons near his home, shooting womp rats with the T-16 skyhopper's low-powered pneumatic cannon, to pulling off wildly complex stunts to impress his friends (and himself), pushing the little airspeeder's engines to their limits, because more than anything, he just liked to go _fast._

It was on one such occasion when, whether due to Luke's recklessness or the T-16's decidedly inferior ion engine, Luke finally managed to break something. Fortunately, it wasn't himself.

"You're going too high! You're gonna stall!" Deak yelled through the comm.

"It's _fine,_ Dee—this is gonna be so cool!" There was a scuffling sound, and then Luke's other friend Camie's voice could be heard.

"It's not gonna be cool when you get in trouble for _dying._ "

"You can't 'get in trouble for dying', you're already dead! And anyway, I'm not going to die. Don't be dramatic." Luke leveled the T-16 at three hundred meters cruising for a moment to enjoy the view. It was hot in the cockpit, much hotter than it had been at lower altitudes. Though he wasn't technically that much closer to the suns than he had been before, Luke still thought they seemed far larger and brighter from up here. He could just barely see his friends, two minute dots on the ground below. The canyons to the west, Anchorhead was visible to the east, and the vast swathes of sand stretching out in all directions.

Luke closed his eyes and imagined that the dunes were the crests of waves; that the sunlight bleeding through his eyelids was the star of a different system; that the buildings in the distance were a _real_ city, flooded with light and noise. He took a deep breath in through his nose and out, slowly, through his mouth.

Then he cut the engine and thrust the control stick down, and the T-16 dove.

\-----

Luke's performance had an audience of two others, whose presence was unknown to him. Ben and Cody sat perched on a rocky bluff in the canyons, sharing lunch, though lunch was promptly forgotten when Luke chose to free-fall back towards the surface of Tatooine in his skyhopper at a perfect ninety-degree angle, the tri-wings corkscrewing artfully as the ship descended.

"He's gonna make it." Even as he said it, Ben's hand was half-outstretched, ready to intervene if he was wrong.

"No, he's not."

"The Force will guide him."

"What, like it guided you the couple hundred times you crashed during the war?"

"No one's shooting at him."

"That ship can't take a dive like that. It's not even a real _ship_ , it's an _airspeeder._ "

Two hundred meters. One hundred, seventy-five, fiftyfortythirty...

_"Ben."_

"He's got it."

At the last second, the ion engines flared to life and the T-16 jolted upwards again in an explosive spray of disturbed sand. Cody flinched, and Ben rested a consoling hand on his shoulder.

"See? I told you."

But they were both wrong. As the T-16 did a little victory loop, there was a loud _bang_ and a piercing whine of various mechanisms failing. The skyhopper died in the air, fortunately only a few meters from the ground. It was swiftly engulfed by billowing clouds of pale smoke. As they watched, Luke, unharmed, opened the cockpit and scrambled away from the ship to his friends, who were running towards him.

"Well," Ben sighed. "He would've been fine if he'd been in a Jedi starfighter." Cody groaned and rubbed his face with his hands.

\-----

When Luke came to visit them the next weekend (under the guise of spending the night in Mos Eisley with a friend yet again), he seemed rather down. Ben could hazard a guess as to why.

Ben had been intending to let Luke confide in him in his own time, but when the turbulence of the boy's mind threatened to poke anxious holes in Ben's own meditative state, it became clear that they weren't going to get very far without addressing the issue. There were times when meditating with Luke was not unlike meditating with Anakin—they both radiated a lawless, Force-fueled energy, but the rather large difference was that Anakin had been a Knight who _should have known better_ than to allow temporary issues to taint his connection to the Force, and Luke was a child who was still learning what feelings _were_ , let alone how to control them.

"What troubles you, Luke?" The boy fidgeted slightly where he sat across from Ben. Shame and sadness pressed against his mind like mud.

"N-nothing."

"You know you can tell me anything. I am not here to pass judgment on your actions, only to offer guidance." His judgments had always been suspect anyway. "And this," he gestured between the two of them, "works better when there's trust between us."

Luke's posture sagged and his blue eyes grew slightly watery. Ben was perplexed—surely the boy's crash had not traumatized him so much? The skyhopper had looked fixable, and Luke showed no signs of injury. No, there was something else.

"I crashed my T-16 the other day." Luke stared fixedly at a rock a few feet in front of him. "It wasn't a bad crash, I coulda fixed it, but—but—" his voice broke and he took a ragged breath, seeming to steady himself. "When Uncle Owen found out, he was so mad—he told me—he took the parts away, and he s-said—he told me he'd never let me fly again, Ben! That he wouldn't let me fix it, that I wasn't allowed to fly any other airspeeders or ships, and that if he ever found out I flew one he'd lock me in my room for _a month._ A whole _month!_ But I _love_ flying! and I said I'd never _ever_ try it again, but he wouldn't listen, he just said I needed to be taught a lesson and I was careless and irreps-irresponsi—" Luke broke down into sobs, and when Ben held out his arm Luke sprang forward into a messy, weepy heap in his lap. Ben held him there, rubbing his back soothingly. Force, if only he'd known Owen Lars would be such an issue...

"Shh, it's alright. I'm sorry he reacted that way, you shouldn't have had to deal with that." Luke buried his face in Ben's outer robe, but his sobs died down after a few moments. Ben looked back towards the house to see Cody leaning in the doorway, brow furrowed. Ben gave him a reassuring smile over Luke's shoulder, knowing full well that he'd be listening to another 'Owen Lars is a _karking shabuir_ ' speech later.

When Luke emerged from his shoulder a few minutes later, his face was puffy and his eyes were pink.

"I know he didn't handle it well, but he was just worried for you. He'll get over it, and you'll fly again, I promise." Luke nodded shakily and sniffed. 

"You know, your father was a masterful pilot." Luke's eyes brightened at the mention of his father. Ben didn't talk about Anakin much, but he'd told Luke the basics. That his father had been like a younger brother to him, that he'd trained him and practically raised him, that he had been a powerful Jedi and an honorable man—and that he was gone. Not dead. Just gone.

"That's _osik,_ you _despised_ flying with Skywalker," Cody called from the doorway.

"I certainly did. I thought I was going to die every time. But he was a good pilot." Luke giggled.

"How about some saber forms? We can come back to meditating later, if you like." Luke grinned and nodded.

\-----

It was about a week later that Luke found himself and his friends sipping on blue milk outside Tosche Station when he felt an insistent tug on the sleeve of his tunic. He turned, expecting to see one of the station workers there to tell them to buzz off if they weren't going to buy anything, and so he nearly jumped out of his skin when he found himself staring into the beady red eyes of a Jawa.

"I didn't do it!" Luke yelped automatically. The Jawa said nothing, but thrust a rattling metal box into his arms.

"I can't buy, I don't have any credits— _nyeta toineepa!_ "

" _Yanna kuzu peekay,_ " the Jawa said, pushing the box further into his arms. Luke didn't know what that meant, but before he could ask the Jawa was hurrying off again, their dark robes flapping at their ankles.

"Did...did a Jawa just give you something _for free?_ " Fixer asked indignantly, looking over Camie's head to eye Luke's box.

"Show us what's in it!" Deak commanded.

"Yeah, show us!"

Luke cautiously opened the box, half expecting it to be filled with bones or something else disturbing. But it wasn't—it was filled with tools and spare parts.

"Oooookay. A box of random parts?"

"No, not random," Luke muttered as the realization hit him. They were the parts he needed to fix the T-16. Or, at least, they would be, if Uncle Owen weren't still holding the rest of the airspeeder hostage. But that could only go on so long, as Ben had pointed out.

Tucked into the bottom of the box was a single sabacc card—a black and green sylop. Luke picked it up and turned it over in his hand, a smile spreading across his face.

\-----

Three months later, Ben and Cody watched the inaugural flight of the repaired skyhopper from the bluffs once again. Cody had also helped Luke paint a green sylop card icon on the vertical wing, at the boy's request, though Ben had insisted that Luke win at least one hand of sabacc against him before he was allowed to use the symbol.

It wasn't long before Luke was zipping around with abandon again, though he seemed to have taken at least some of Ben's advice to heart.

_"Know your ship. While it is true that a ship is only as good as its pilot, a pilot must also listen to the machine—you cannot function in isolation, and you will be able to get more out of it with patience and understanding."_

_"And don't try to free fall from its maximum altitude?" Luke had asked. Ben hesitated, considering his words carefully._

_"I'm just saying—_ if _you do—and I'm_ not _saying you should—try that maneuver again, I'd recommend firing the engine in a few short bursts before you end the dive to slow your fall and decrease the strain on the repulsors. If you do that again. Which you probably shouldn't."_

_"Thanks, Uncle Ben!" Ben didn't miss Cody's alarmed expression behind Luke's back. Oh well._

**Author's Note:**

> Since I mention them several times, if anyone is curious, these are sylop cards: 
> 
> https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pure_sabacc?file=Pure_sabacc_HowNotToGetEatenByEwoks.jpg 
> 
> The green icon in the middle is what Luke painted on the T-16!


End file.
